DeFord Bailey's time has (finally) come

Were he alive to see it, DeFord Bailey might be astonished to be inducted Tuesday into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Though he became one of country's earliest stars in the late 1920s and '30s, he spent much of his time facing obstacles: He stood not quite 5 feet tall, walked with a limp and suffered from a hunched back, all the result of childhood polio.

But the biggest obstacle to his career was his color. Bailey was a black musician who, at least for a time, succeeded in the mostly white world of country music.

Twenty-three years after his death, and more than 75 years after he became one of the Grand Ole Opry's first celebrities, Bailey is finally getting his due. His life was not glamorous: Even at the height of his fame, he was a victim of racism, barred from sleeping in hotels or eating at restaurants with his white bandmates. He was ousted from the Opry stage in 1941 for reasons that remain unclear and spent the remainder of his years in relative obscurity, shining shoes and playing harmonica for his customers.

His time at last

What took the Hall of Fame so long to induct a man widely acknowledged as one of country's earliest and most groundbreaking stars? The panel of voters "gets younger every year," says Ed Benson, executive director of the Country Music Association. "As time goes on, some of these early pioneers of country music, particularly those who came to prominence before World War II, there are fewer people around who have a personal connection to them."

Attention has refocused on Bailey in the form of a 1991 biography ("DeFord Bailey: A Black Star in Early Country Music") co-authored by David Morton and Charles Wolfe, and a 2002 public television documentary ("DeFord Bailey: A Legend Lost"), which was rebroadcast earlier this year. Bailey's induction is also the result of a long lobbying campaign by family members and music historians.

"We've been having this battle for 15 years, and we're overjoyed that he's finally getting his recognition," says Wolfe, a professor emeritus at Middle Tennessee State University. "He was the Rosa Parks of country music. He wasn't intimidated by the racism and the segregation that he ran into."

Bailey's induction also comes as country music is trying to expand beyond its mostly white audience. Cowboy Troy, the black "hick-hop" artist, features prominently in advertisements for the awards show and will be a presenter. And the Hall of Fame in Nashville is currently hosting an exhibit through Dec. 31, "Night Train to Nashville," chronicling the city's vibrant rhythm and blues scene in the 1940s and beyond.

Yet few people could name any black country stars beyond Charley Pride, who seemed to have that field to himself during a long career that began in the 1960s.

"It's interesting to me why, over the years, we haven't seen more African-American artists," says Benson, noting that about 4 percent of country-music listeners are black. "It's something I hope will happen more in the future."

Bailey was born outside of Bellwood, Tenn., Dec. 14, 1899, a time when black musicians were far from uncommon. Slaves who played fiddle and banjo for their owners continued to make music after emancipation -- "black hillbilly music," as Bailey called it. Bedridden with polio as a toddler, Bailey was given a harmonica as a distraction. The disease stunted his growth and wracked his body, but he taught himself to play melodies and to mimic the sounds he heard around him -- dogs, geese, barnyard animals. And his ability to reproduce the sounds of a moving train -- with chugging notes and the swooping Doppler effect (which changes the pitch of a sound) -- would lead to his signature tune, "Pan American Blues," which rocketed him to fame.

A one-man band

"He developed a style where he would play the rhythm and the melody at the same time," says Brenda Colladay, museum and photograph curator at the Grand Ole Opry. "It surprised people that it was just one person playing this. It was like Mother Maybelle's guitar style, playing a bass note on one line and picking the melody."

In 1918, Bailey's family moved to Nashville, where he eventually landed a spot as a harmonica player on the WSM radio show "Barn Dance," later known as the "Grand Ole Opry." It was Bailey who helped inspire the name change. The show happened to come on after a classical program, which one night in 1927 aired a symphony inspired by the sounds of a train. WSM announcer George D. Hay told his listeners they'd just heard some grand opera -- but now they'd hear the down-home "grand ole opry," featuring Bailey's famous playing.

In 1933, Bailey began touring with other Opry artists. "I was an unknown, and DeFord traveled with me for a long time," Roy Acuff says in a clip from the PBS documentary. "He helped me to get where I am."

Offstage, however, Bailey was just another black man in the Jim Crow South. Unable to come and go freely in the venues where he played, Bailey depended on others to bring him food during shows. He carried an army blanket to keep warm during nights in the car. Frequently, his band mates would pass Bailey off as their baggage handler or even their valet."He was so driven by his art that he didn't care," says Kathy Conkwright, the producer-director of the PBS documentary. "He was willing to accept the ways of the times that were so demeaning to him."

As the music industry began to boom in Nashville, record labels struggled with how to market artists of different races. Fearing that whites wouldn't buy albums by blacks, the labels set up their own form of segregation: Whites made country albums, and blacks played rhythm and blues, or "race music."

"They had to play the kind of music they were expected to play, which was blues," Wolfe says. "They had to sound like Robert Johnson or Son House." As a result, "the black tradition of hillbilly music was pretty much extinguished."

The PBS documentary features a quote from Bailey, who was interviewed late in life by Morton, his biographer: "I was handicapped," Bailey says. "I was the wrong color to get anywhere. I couldn't work. If they'd let me play what I wanted, I could have stole the show. But they had me down. I wasn't free."